Junk of the hearts
by Annchen
Summary: Testing, testing... It’s Halloween, the day of the dead, and after the war there are plenty of dead people to remember. An ancient school, an old battlefield, and a new graveyard. Old enemies meet again, but nothing is quite the same. DM/CC pairing.


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Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. 

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Warning: Chances are your favorite characters are:  
a) dead  
b) miserable  
c) not in the story at all

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Rating: R. 

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Summary: It's Halloween, the day of the dead, and after the war there are plenty of dead people to remember. An ancient school, an old battlefield, and a new graveyard. Old enemies meet again, but nothing is quite the same. DM/CC pairing. 

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Junk of the hearts

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We never chose to part // in this stupid play

I never felt by heart // that I could behave // the way the roles were made

I know that I've done you wrong // but you're hard to please

when your faith is gone // and when you can't believe // I'm on my hands and knees

the junk of the hearts

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Halloween 2000 – Hogwarts memorial

Some day in the future there would be generations to whom the Hogwarts Memorial always had existed. There would be children who would never know a Hogwarts without the big graveyard as part of the school-grounds. They would dare each other to sneak into the graveyard at night, not really thinking about why it existed. Maybe their parents would take them to the Great Pensieve of War to make them understand, and hopefully they themselves would carry on that tradition, because there where some things in that Pensieve that should never be forgotten.

There were rows with hundreds of gravestones standing in the short grass. Hundreds of former students and professors rested underneath those stones. The yard was divided into quarters by a wide white pebbled path and newly planted hedges, each quarter belonging to one of the Hogwarts houses. Gryffindor lay to the North West, with Slytherin by it's side. Hufflepuff was under Gryffindor and Ravenclaw to the South East. 

A tradition of sorts was beginning to form even though the pain was as new as the grass covering the graves. Every Halloween witches and wizards from all over Britain and abroad, traveled to the Hogwarts Memorial. They came to visit the graves of loved ones, to pay tribute to the war heroes and to remember. Only the brave or the foolish dared to put a finger in the Great Pensieve and feel the horrors that took place here only a couple of years ago. Most people were satisfied with simply gazing down into it to get a glimpse of what had taken place here. Mediwizards in casual clothing where at hand at all times to take care of those who got overwhelmed by their emotions. 

--|||--

Mr. Malfoy had left his sobbing wife at one of the mausoleums and now wandered randomly across the cemetery. He walked the path that ran all the way round the cemetery, following the outer hedge. His eyes traveled over the inscriptions on the marble-pieces. Fragments of sorrow from mourning relatives or polite phrases from ministry officials when no relatives where left alive. The birthdates differed a little, many from the seventies or eighties, but also people from the turn of the century. The death dates however where all concentrated to the years –96 –97 and –98. The dark years. The years many had chosen to forget, not completely, but partly; the pain was too great to bear.

His feet carried him to one of the other mausoleums. It was made entirely out of red sandstone, but thanks to magic it would never grind down to dust. A white marble-owl sat on top of it, and her amber eyes followed every visitor. He read the familiar words on the stone plaque.

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Harry James Potter

July 1980 --

August 1998

The boy who lived 

and then died to save us all.

May his spirit rest in peace.

A bit melodramatic, but he was The Hero who ended the war after all. 

"And all he had to do was die." Malfoy mused. Too late he realized that he had said that out loud.

"He saved us all!" an outraged voice cried. "He even saved your filthy life, but why he did that is beyond me."

He turned slowly. Ronald Weasley stood mere meters behind him, shaking with anger. 

"Ron." he said and allowed his lips to curl into a small smile. "A pleasure to meet you."

"Cut the crap, Malfoy," growled Ron. "You don't have to pretend in front of me. I can see through your little games even if no one else has yet."

"All right then, I won't 'pretend'," he drawled. "You look like shit, Weasley."

That wasn't a lie. The shadows under Ron's eyes where almost black and his hair had lost all its natural shine. His eyes were blood-shot, after many sleepless nights or maybe too much time in the company of a bottle. He was better dressed than he had ever been during his school-time, but his clothes where a mess. In fact he looked like he hadn't washed himself in days, and according to the smell that could very well be true.

What is it they say? _The more you have, the more you can loose._ And Ron Weasley must have lost it all.

"You're still as horrible as you ever were, Malfoy," Ron hissed. "Everyone says that you saw the error of your ways and decided to turn to the good side. Bullshit! I don't know why you went to Dumbledore to pray for forgiveness in the middle of a flaming war, but I don't think you did it because you suddenly got tired of the killing."

"Please, call me Draco. You do remember my given name, don't you?" he mocked. It was surprisingly easy to slip into the old animosity, Draco mused. Here they where, insulting each other like they had done in school, as if the years that had passed suddenly didn't matter. It was comforting in a way. Baiting Weasley until he could do little more than scream obscenities.

"I wish I could forget all about you," Ron said, "but you seem to be everywhere these days. And you didn't answer my question."

"Was that a question?" Draco asked innocently. "No, I wouldn't change loyalties only because I thought it was 'the right thing'. My father always told me to cheer for the winning team, and so I did. Even if _he_ was foolish enough to stay."

"You're a disloyal bastard!" screamed Ron.

"Calm down, we don't want you to suffer a heart-attack and die like your mother." It was so easy to hurt him. So easy to make him scream.

"Shut the fuck up, Malfoy! And let me rephrase that. You're a disloyal, repulsive arse!"

"No Ron, I'm not. To a certain degree I'm very loyal. But my loyalties can change," he stated calmly. "I'm not stupid enough to stay with a team I know is going to loose. And that's more than can be said about you. How long has it been since the Chudley Cannons won a game of Quidditch?"

"I always knew you didn't do this just for the good sake." Ron growled, "And there is nothing wrong with loyalty…"

"I value my own skin more than ethics and morals." 

"That only proves you to be a coward!"

"Maybe," Draco admitted. "Or it proves you to be stupid."

"And what if I am?" Ron said with a tear stained face. Tears. Draco couldn't remember if he had ever made Ron cry before. Touching. Apparently his voice cracked when he got this upset. "But... But you can't call Harry stupid. Not after what he did for us."

"I call it whatever I want," he said curtly. "I know I owe him my life, but I still think what he did was stupid. Brave yes, but stupid. I couldn't have done it myself, maybe no one could have."

Ron seemed to have lost it completely now. For a moment Draco thought that he would start sobbing on his shoulder, but at the last moment Ron turned around and kneeled in front of his friend's grave, resting his head against the stone, shaking with resisted tears or anger or both. He looked like a broken doll, but Draco couldn't resist twisting the knife some more.

"Now that we have this settled, can we go back to disliking each other in peace or are you still going to bother me?"

"Just… Just leave me alone."

Draco obeyed his wish and left the crying man on the ground in front of the mausoleum. When he had walked twenty meters he realized that he had let the other man get the last word. Despite every bad fibre in his body he didn't go back to change that.

--|||--

Draco didn't find his wife where he had left her earlier. She must have pulled herself together and gone to visit some of the other graves. He didn't feel like searching the whole graveyard right now. Hopefully she would come back and find him if he just stayed here. He turned to look at the mausoleum, cut out of some kind of yellow stone. This one was smaller than the one erected in the memory of The Boy Who Lived. Mourning angels looked down from the roof and two badgers stood on either side of the tombstone as if they where guarding it. The inscription was almost completely covered by a large mass of flowers leaving only the name visible: Cedric Diggory.

When he saw people heading his way he sighed and went in search of his wife. This time he didn't follow the path along the edge of the graveyard, instead he walked the big trail along the inner hedges. He didn't stay to look at the Pensieve in the middle, but he noted that his wife wasn't there. Instead he continued to walk the path towards the third mausoleum. To his left lay countless of his house-mates buried, to his right lay many of his wife's friends. He couldn't make out her small form among the people walking the paths between the graves, but that didn't mean that she wasn't there. That was the downside in having a petite wife.

He reached the other end of the graveyard. Albus Dumbledore had been buried where he had fallen and his mausoleum was made out of the stone from the collapsed north tower. It seemed fitting to bury him between the stone-walls that had been his home and work-place for so long time. His wife was not among the party gathered in silent prayer under the roof in Dumbledore's final resting-place so he had to continue his search.

She could be somewhere among her friends' graves or… Draco reluctantly turned left and entered the Slytherin quarter of Hogwarts memorial. Not looking at the graves he walked diagonally across the grass, to take the shortest way back to the red mausoleum. He silently hoped that Ron would be far away by now.

He found her there alone, holding a big white lily to her chest. His wife, Cho Malfoy. 

"Don't worry," she said silently without turning around. "I'll be ready to go soon, this one is the last."

She never ceased to amaze him with her ability to recognize him by sound only. When he didn't answer immediately she held out the flower towards him. 

"Do you want to put it on his grave?"

He nodded silently, accepting it solemnly. They stood there in silence for a while, thinking. Draco reflected on the difference between his and Ron's agitated meeting here less than an hour ago, and this peace and silence in company of his wife. What she thought about he didn't know. Not until she spoke.

"Do you love me?" she said abruptly.

"Do _you_ love me?" he replied without loosing a beat.

"I asked first," she said and pouted adorably.

"I know," he said and caressed the leaves of the white lily.

"Don't be like this!"

He looked at her for a long time.

"You don't love me." he stated and continued his little speech before she could interrupt. "Don't say you do because I know you don't. I knew this when we married, and I married you anyway. You still love Him, but you can't have Him. I'll never be more than second best to you. I knew all that, and under the circumstances I don't think I'm obliged to answer your question. It's irrelevant whether I love you or not. This marriage is not built upon love."

She looked at her feet.

"You've known this all along," he said tiredly.

"I guess I have," she said through clenched teeth, "but why can't you at least try?"

And with that she tried to disapparate. Her disappointed frown when she found she couldn't would have been funny in another situation, imagine a Rawenclaw who forgot that it was impossible to apparate and dissaparate from Hogwarts grounds, but Draco felt no desire to smile. This was how she always ended their arguments, and frankly, it was getting a bit tiresome. If they where at home she would simply apparate to another room, or out in the garden. Now she simply turned around and headed for the nearest apparation point. He didn't know if he should follow or not.

He knew that when he returned he would find her at home, making him tea as if nothing had happened. Lapsang Souchong. Always that same tea-blend. He had learned to enjoy the rich flavour like he enjoyed a glass of good whiskey or a fine cigar. The smoky scent that filled the house after their arguments was her token of forgiveness. That was what he had always thought anyway. 

He jumped when a disembodied head suddenly appeared next to him, but he recovered his usual calm soon enough.

"Yes," he drawled, "the invisibility cloak. That trick is getting old, you know."

"You're hurting her," the head whispered sadly.

"Go away, ghost!" he said wearily and threw the lily carelessly on the pile of flowers in front of the gravestone. When he tried to leave the spirit stood in his way.

"She doesn't love you," the ghost hissed angrily and threw the ghost of an invisibility-cloak aside. 

"That's not the point," he said slowly as if talking to a small child. "I didn't marry her for love. Besides, she didn't love you either."

"But I loved her..." the ghost whispered. "At least I loved her."

"It doesn't matter now Potter," he said cruelly. "You got the glory Potter, I got the girl."

He braced himself and walked away, straight through the ghost, ignoring the icy chill that seemed to grip his heart like a cold hand.

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I've given all of me // and you crave for more

weird how this makes us feel // insecure // that's what friends are for

.fin.

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A/N: Please try not to flame me for treating Ron badly. I like love Ron. I was trying to write a really evil Draco to counter all the redeemed hero!Dracos out there... Did I succeed? I don't know if this is any good and I might take this down again. 


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